There was a throbbing vein popped out on the Scoundrel's forehead. The kind of vein you expect to see on the back of someone's leg rather than on a forehead. Nonetheless, there it sat, kind of bluish and threatening, while the Scoundrel stared into space and made kissy-faces at his memories.
He would pucker up that big old set of lips of his, drawing the chapped lower lip up into a scrunched up little ball while the chapped upper lip would fan out like the wings of a scavenger bird looking for carrion. You half expected the Scoundrel to settle down on a coyote carcass and start lapping up the juices that the '81 Crown Victoria knocked out of it. But the Scoundrel just stayed in one place, making those kissy-faces at his memories.
As the memories began to fade, the vein throbbed harder and the Scoundrel's kissy-faces became more intense. It looked like half of his hive-sotted face was being sucked into the pucker – first his chin, then the lower part of his nostrils, then both cheeks, eventually the bridge of his nose. The pucker became something of a vortex or a vacuum, drawing in the Scroundrel's face along with each and every little hive upon it. As the top of his head began to disappear into the pucker, his shoulders and chest began to be drawn up, and his arms involuntarily lifted into the air. The Scoundrel flopped to the ground as one leg went fore and one leg went aft and both went toward his head. Two size-eleven wino shoes were the last things that went in, and with a massive kissy-sound the Scoundrel was gone.
There on the ground was left a massive forehead vein – no longer throbbing, no longer blue and threatening.
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